Revisiting the Fish-Eyed Goddess in Madurai

Earlier Lee wrote that our visit to Meenakshi Temple in Madurai (on Friday, October 29th) seemed impossible to capture in photographs. The complex, dedicated to Parvati, the consort of Shiva here known as Meenakshi ("the Fish-Eyed Goddess"), is both extremely large and quite complex, filled daily with thousands of devotees, and a disjointed hodge-podge of architectural and sculptural elements impossible to aggregate into a meaningful whole.

In the end, however, he couldn't resist trying! So here's an attempt to describe our walk through this truly marvelous sacred space illustrated along the way with some digital images hopefully capturing something of the visual grandeur of the place.

Let's begin with an aerial view of the entire temple complex:

And here's a reference map indicating (in alphabetical order) the various locations visited as we trudged from spot to spot:
We approached the temple initially, having alighted from our bus a block or so away, down a narrow side street which then disgorged us onto a brick plaza just to the north of the walled complex. This approach brought gasps from us all as we emerged onto the plaza and caught our first glimpse of one of the seven gopura dominating the horizon.

After removing our shoes and depositing them in a shoe kiosk, we entered one of the two gates [A] at the temple's eastern edge (the western gopura representing the head; those to the north and south, the arms; and the two to the south, the legs) where we found an extremely busy and colorful market in full swing.

We turned left at the first opportunity into a corridor with brightly painted ceilings , then stopped to admire a huge wedding hall [B] topped by an absolutely amazing layered teak ceiling ...

... before taking a right and climbing some stairs to look out over the Golden Lily Tank [C] from a pillared veranda from which we could also catch views of others in the temple's inventory of gopura.

We stopped to admire the temple's largest tower with its gracefully curved base and layer upon layer of polychromed images [D], ...

... then wandered along yet another pillar-lined hallway searching out a particularly nice image of Ganesha [E].

We passed by the holy-of-holies [F] housing an image of Parvati (open only to Hindus) ..
.
... and came into a huge exuberantly decorated hall. Ahead of us another Ganesha image [G] garnered obeisances from avid followers -- as did hosts of other sacred objects scattered throughout the temple corridors.

Turning to our left, we entered the Great Hall [H] in front of the sanctuary [I] housing the temple's principle image of Shiva (here known as Sundarashvara -- "the Handsome One"). Here we found a statue of Nandi, the bull serving as Shiva's steed, and a golden pillar pointing into the sky above.

We passed through another gate (where we were blessed by an elephant!) to return to the entrance hall where we had begun our trek.

Lots of shops crowded the hallway here but we still managed to find the entrance to the Thousand Pillar Hall [J] which now serves as a museum -- and where one can find a set of seven pillars that, when struck, sound out the scale used in Carnatic music.

So there you have it: a short, illustrated tour of what Lee believes to be the best temple seen on the Soul of India tour.